カカクコム社長 田中実の忘我録

1st half of the fiscal year 2010

We disclosed the captioned performance today.  In conslolidated basis, sales volume, operating profit and current profit were JPY5.937billion, JPY2.258billion and JPY2.263billion respectively, which is better than our projection revised upwardly in August.  Following these figures, we also updated our anual projection upwardly as JPY12.9billion for sales volume, JPY5.2billion for operating and current profit.

Moreover, the most recent traffic (October's number) that was also disclosed today was better than we expected and even in November we are being able to feel the same and very strong momentum. Under the current Japan's economy, our service seems more valuable from the viewpoint of consumers.

Thus, even second half, we are determined to reach out for best performance ever as you are looking forward to.

Regards,

Minoru Tanaka, president

kakaku.com, Inc.

UU & PV of Sep.2009

As having been disclosed, our websites' traffice (UU and PV) in cosolidated basis of the captioned term was the highest ever.  PV surpassed 1 billion and UU exceeded 42million which both were growing faster than we had expected at the biginning of  this fiscal year.

As for this 3rd quarter, that contains the highest shopping season like X'mas and winter bonus, etc.  Riding on these favorable factors, we would like to accelerate our business performance by providing more useful services that Japanese consumers would miss.

Regards,

tabelog.com

Except for the most popular website we are running, kakaku.com itself, we do have another giant website named tabelog.com, restaurants search engine that claims more than 10million unique users in August.

When you look into numbers of users and page views respectively, using alexa.com, tabelog.com seems to have surpassed all the restaurant related web sites in Japan. The thing I want to put an emphasis on is that while second biggest one (UU and PV-wise speaking) is said to be gnavi.co.jp, the biggest difference is human resources both servises are using.

Our site, tabelog.com is operated by 15 people whilst gnavi.co.jp is by more than 1000 people. This is due to our users' contribution, who write more than 40thousand restaurant reviews in monthly basis. Thus we can operate without hiring so many professional writers or correspondents.

In the future we would surely expand this kind of service to other areas such as hospital search, hair salon seach and so on,,,,

Please keep your eyes on our business perfomances from now on.

Regards,

traffic data for May,2009

The captioned data was released today as per attached. The result (36million unique users in all) was better than I personally expected and strongly wish that this trend could last for good.  Especially, growth rate of tabelog.com was superb and indelibly etched in my mind whilst all the other web-sites we are running are doing good.

(I really apologize that English version of the data is not available yet, though that one would be from the next month.)

Very best regards,

fiscal year end

There are only several hours left before we see the end of fiscal year 2009/3.  I think we, kakaku.com,Inc. could establish fortress of sales and profit, not depending on kakaku.com only but also based on other websites like 4travel.jp, tabelog.com(coined word of taberu or eat in Japanese and blog)  etc. this year,  and belive that such movement would accelerate next year.

But as I always mention every time I see foreign investors, our standpoint is very clear and would never change. That is pro-consumer, or pro-internet users, standing by consumers / our users whatever new services we release.

Looking forward to talking to you-all about our result very soon,

3rd quarter result of kakaku.com,Inc.

Yesterday, we disclosed the captioned financial report and now the English version summary is available. Overall, the result was very good, mainly due to augmented traffic both unique user-wise and pageview-wise speaking.  And more favorably, this trend is still continuing as January's  number of UU of kakaku.com was approximately 18million, or 5% more than December's one that itself was the highest ever.  Also other services like tabelog (BBS website for restaurant) and eiga.com(information and BBS website for movies) though not consolidated yet are recording higher-than-ever performances.

Looking forward to talking to you-all very soon.

2nd quarter of fiscal year 2009

A couple of days ago, we disclosed financial data for the captioned term.  From April 1st to September 30th, sales volume and current profit in consolidated basis were approximately 4.35billion JPY and 1.66billion JPY respectively, both of which were the highest number as 6 months' figures.

Main reasons why we have performed well are because under severe stagflation (today, I think that is shifting to deflation), Japanese consumers are more price-conscious and eager to buy highest-value goods under limited budget. We do have all the data like price information, reputation and word-of-mouth both provided by consumers, specification etc. for consumers to decide what to buy, when to buy, where to buy...

kakaku.com, Inc. would ride on this favorable wave and never stop releasing state-of-the-art services.

Traffic of this August of kakaku.com

Usually, traffic of kakaku.com for which I mean numbers of unique users and pageviews, would be 4 or 5 % less than ones of July due to summer season when consumers go out for vacation. Especially this year such impact was expected to be stronger because in addition to vacation season, there was Olympic games in Beijing that we thought would shift interest in all the internet traffic to TV.

However, according to bullet report to me yesterday, such impact was much less than our forecast. The kakaku.com's traffic of Augsut was just 1.5% less than one of July. We should scrutinize what was going on now in Japan's internet and its economy, stangnant atomosphere of which might be making Japanese consumers look for lower prices and BBS of each product item through kakaku.com before they actually purchase anything. At any rate, not a bad news. For more details, be kindly requested to wait a bit.

Sincerely,

1st quarter of fiscal year 2009

The captioned quarter already ended on June 30 and today we released its financial performance after our auditor endorsed its authenticity, as per attached. Major figures, sales volume, current profit, net profit after tax were 2.17billion JPY,  835MM JPY, and 478MM JPY respectively, which I feel were better than expected.

Main reason why we could accomplished these figures was our well-performing websites' traffic that generated more sales from CPC, CPA and advertisement.(*)

As for 2nd quarter and/or rest of this fiscal year, I wish we could be sort of epicenter of Japan's internet industry from the viewpoint of innovation and high-quality contents which I do believe lead to good performance.

Looking forward to hearing from you all very soon,

(*)CPC: cost per click/ CPA:cost per action

Blank hereunder.

Looking back at 1st Quarter

When you need to know real value of internet-media companies like kakaku.com, Inc., one of the best approaches is to check numbers of unique users and page views as you already know (UU and PV hereunder respectively).

We disclosed the most recent data available for June last week as per attached(sorry for Japanese). It was very comfortable level and such numbers are still growing. However, what I noticed and now am paying attention to is that such trend is a bit different from the last 2 or 3 years.

Usually, UU & PV first half of the fiscal year (April to September) would be stagnant because such season includes long national holidays (named "Golden Week") and summer vacation season when consumers would go traveling and/or go to movietheaters. And thereafter, in second half, our traffic(UU & PV) would jump up, grabbing demand and consumption for winter bonus and X'mas.

But this year, our traffic(especially kakaku.com itself) is already breaking the last year's highest record, which I am suspecting is reflecting our country's economy.  This summer, it is said in newspapers that bonus income and consumption would be lower level whilst CPI is rising faster and steeper and consumers tend to be more conscious of information for price and BBS (or reputation by other users) before they purchase anything (especially durable goods).

We are determined to augment our commitment to contribute to such needs by our users and I do believe that would be good impact to higher value of this company.